Abandoned Fic Idea Drabbles
by sarcastic rabbit
Summary: These are story ideas that I didn't turn into fanfic for one reason or another. I tried writing them as drabbles instead.
1. Out of Sarain

**Out of Sarain**

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Buri is used to being a stranger: at the Warlord's court, among people who speak to her as though she is an animal; as an exile wandering the Eastern Lands; in Tortall, where no one has heard of the K'miri. But when Thayet, exotic in every setting, turns her familiar hazel gaze on Buri, grave and intent, then Buri knows herself to be at home.

Thayet knows Buri better than anyone. Buri is her friend and ally; prickly and wary and true. Then, one night at their campfire, somewhere between Sarain and the Roof of the World, Buri sings. Her voice is low and sweet and a little rough, and Thayet finds herself watching a familiar stranger.


	2. Beautiful

**Beautiful **

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In their ignorance the Tortallans praise her beauty. _Exotic, peerless, skin like ivory, lips like red roses, hair silken and sable._

Thayet knows better. Her father's courtiers found fault with her dark skin, her tilted eyes, her full lips. _Half-breed_ and _barbarian_ were the kinder names they used. Her mother's people loved her for Kalasin's sake, though in their eyes she was too tall, her bones too slender and sharp, her light skin like that of the hated Lowland oppressors.

Thayet almost laughs in dismay when the eager Tortallans call her the most beautiful woman in the world.

(The most beautiful woman in the world is dead.)

But when Jon smiles at her and says, _My beautiful wife_, warm and intimate, Thayet lets herself believe that it is true.


	3. Drift

**Drift**

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It's a rare disease of the mind, the Healers say, likely made worse by the desert magic, the Jewel and his own Gift combining in unforeseeable ways. The Bazhir deny that the Voice of the Tribes was ever meant for a foreigner.

It's small things at first. Day to day details start to elude him, though he can recall every stride of the race for the Chieftaincy (a rite long abandoned) with crystalline clarity. He calls his children by the names of centuries-dead Bazhir. He stops recognizing familiar faces. The words of his language are replaced with the tribal tongue.

Eventually his mind is wholly claimed by the past; remembered lives like specks of sand—thousands, millions, an infinite desert—sweep over him until he is gone.


	4. Lost

**Lost**

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He can't remember his name.

He can't remember anything. Where is he? Is he even 'he?'

A gray wolf lopes up, bright amber eyes.

_You're not supposed to be here._

She's right. Certainty hits hard, icy water down his spine (he doesn't have a spine, a body). This is all wrong.

_What happened?_ _Do you know?_

He's desperate, but she's already gone.

Another time, the wolf returns, but now she's a silent man, black, thin-boned, shadowed eyes.

_Who am I?_

-then,

_What did I do?_

Anxiety tangles him up, a thorny thicket. The shadow-man is difficult to read: detachment, compassion?

_You're lost,_ is all he'll say before becoming one with the shadows, melting, gone.

Time is a wistful dream, but he can't sleep. His now is one moment drawn out into forever. He waits for something to happen, anything, feels like something, if it comes, might be far worse (how?).

He tries to remember his name.

It catches him unprepared. A tug, inexorable, pulling him apart into a pattern, geometry, lines and symbols, a fiery gate. Pain drowns the fire, all that he is is pain, wiped clean—

--blinking tears from his eyes, cold stone slab under his back, chill and ache deep in his flesh, his bones. His vision swims. He focuses. Torches in the dark, violet-red flames dancing and swirling on the edges, it hurts his eyes, a sour man and a beautiful woman stand over him, hungry, terrified, exultant.

He remembers his name, he remembers everything, and Roger laughs, and laughs and laughs.


	5. Myth and Metaphor, Copper Isles Style

**Myth and Metaphor, Copper Isles style**

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So, you want to know what the Copper Isles are like.

Do you know the story of the two jealous brothers? Of course you do. It's found all over the Southern and Eastern Lands, but the legend changes depending on where you hear it told.

There are two brothers: one with light skin and one with dark skin. They grow up rivals, as some brothers do. Jealousy turns to anger, anger turns to hate, and one day they begin to fight with murder in their hearts.

In Tyra, Tortall and Maren, the brothers are the sons of Mithros by different mortal women, and they fight over their portion of divine inheritance. In Tusaine, the story goes a little differently. They fight over a beautiful woman that both desire. In Carthak, the two brothers are the sons of the World-Snake, their mother, and their fighting breaks the world in two. The dark-skinned brother stays on the southern half of the world, while the light-skinned brother leaves for the eastern half of the world. A huge ocean springs up between them from the World-Snake's tears. In the Copper Isles, the dark-skinned warrior is a woman, Gunapi, the Sun-Rose Goddess, who refuses to marry her brother-consort. She wins the fight, banishes her brother, and rules the Isles for a thousand years. In Yaman—well, who really knows what the Yamani think. They say very little that isn't strictly necessary to foreigners.

When I think of the Copper Isles, I see the two brothers locked in mortal combat. The light-skinned one gains the upper hand and wrestles his brother to the ground; he pins him and presses a choking forearm across the other's throat. Yet victory is not his. The dark-skinned brother reaches down and grips the light-skinned brother's belt-knife; and if the light-skinned brother were to move even slightly to end his brother's life, the dark-skinned brother would be able to draw the knife and kill him.

So they remain as they are, locked in a struggle that neither can win. The light-skinned brother grows weary, but is unwilling to let go for fear of being slain by the knife; the dark-skinned brother strains against the chokehold, his eyes glinting with murderous rage.


End file.
